Monday, January 31, 2011

I've been doing a lot of work at Beyond the Box Score since November, and all of the articles I've written over there have also been cross-posted here at DBITL. From now on, that will not be the case. This site will become more "Yankee-centric" (even though it kind of already is) while my work at BtB will not have a focus on a particular team. Though that certainly doesn't mean that I'll post only about the Yankees here and that my work at BtB will only be about other teams. In fact, I'm working on an article for BtB on A.J. Burnett that should be ready in about a week. No big deal; just keeping you up to date.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Tommy Hanson had a successful second season in the big leagues last year, pitching 202 2/3 innings with a 3.33 ERA, 3.31 FIP, and 4.04 xFIP. His contributions were good for 4.3 fWAR. Throughout his minor league career, Hanson had been an extreme strikeout pitcher (10.7 K/9 in 389 innings); his 2010 rate of 7.68 was better than the league average, but was nothing particularly spectacular based on his minor league track record. Looking more closely at his 2010 season, you can see that his ability to strike out hitters sharply declined by the end of the year. The table below shows some splits for Hanson by month in 2010 (September stats include one October start):

ERA

FIP

xFIP

K/9

BB/9

Whiff Rate

GB Rate

April

2.17

2.94

3.50

10.24

3.10

.242

.417

May

5.09

4.15

4.69

7.90

3.31

.224

.356

June

6.31

2.84

3.77

9.12

2.81

.213

.432

July

2.43

2.47

3.46

9.71

1.82

.240

.482

August

3.05

4.07

4.64

5.17

2.35

.174

.413

September

1.81

3.03

3.89

5.84

1.81

.163

.489

At the end of the year, Hanson experienced a sharp drop in his strikeout rate; he remained effective due to improved control. Taking a closer look at his pitches gives us a slightly better idea of what changed for Hanson last year. His repertoire consists of a fastball, a slider, a curveball, and a changeup. I'm calling his fastball a four-seamer for now, but there are probably some two-seamers as well. Hanson threw a fastball or a slider last year nearly 85% of the time, so I'll focus primarily on those two of Hanson's offerings. Splitting up Hanson's whiff rate by the two pitches gives us a bit more insight as to what happened:

FF Whiff Rate

SL Whiff Rate

April

.200

.250

May

.160

.270

June

.106

.391

July

.175

.309

September

.100

.313

October

.073

.290

While the slider became more effective from the start of the season, the fastball's whiff rate was half as high in August and September as it was in April and May. So right there, you have some explanation for the decrease in strikeouts - Hanson became unable to rely on his fastball for garnering swings and misses. But why? A possible explanation is that Hanson lost velocity as the season went on:

The error bars represent one standard deviation.

I saw no detectable difference in pitch location (fastballs higher in the zone tend to be harder to hit) or movement, so I think it's quite possible that the loss of velocity caused more contact. One last think I'd like to see is whether or not Hanson's pitch selection with two strikes changed as it became harder for him to put hitters away with fastballs. There was a very slight change:

Month

FF% with 2 strikes

April

.558

May

.549

June

.463

July

.504

August

.488

September

.482

Basically, I can draw one conclusion from the data: a sharp increase in fastball contact, probably at least in part caused by decreased velocity, made it harder for Hanson to put hitters away, leading to more balls in play.

Thursday, January 13, 2011

Well, I'm surprised. According to Jon Heyman, the Yankees have signed Rafael Soriano to a three-year contract worth $35 million. Yeah, $35 million. Surely there will be better contract analyses of the situation, but I'm just thinking that even if you assume Soriano provides 2 WAR over the next three seasons (which is optimistic virtually unheard of for a setup man), it's still over-paying (assume ~$4.5 million per win). Heyman adds that there's an opt-out clause after the first and second seasons, so conceivably he could look for a closing gig elsewhere if he pitches well in 2011.

I'm also surprised because the Yankees already have two capable setup men in Joba Chamberlain and David Robertson. And also because Brian Cashman recently said that the team would not forfeit their top draft pick, which they'll now have to do given Soriano's Type A status. As good a reliever as Soriano is, I don't like this move right now. With two rotation slots open and Andy Pettitte not pitching next year, this would be a perfect time to slot Chamberlain as the #4 starter, but I highly doubt that the Yankees will do that, given what Cashman has said this offseason. Then again, Cashman also said they weren't going to give up their draft pick. Nonetheless, I'm not getting my hopes up.

This article by Dave Allen got me thinking about something really simple. If you took all games by starters over the past ten years and grouped them by a particular number of innings pitched, how many wins do they end up with? It gave me an excuse to do a distribution:

Since 2001, there has only been one pitcher to win 20 games in fewer than 200 innings. That was Pedro Martinez in 2002, and he just barely made it (199 1/3 innings). The pitchers that won the fewest games with at least 200 innings pitched were Tanyon Sturtze in 2002 and Wayne Franklin in 2004, who both won only 4 games.

In addition, here is the win distribution for the specific criteria that Allen mentioned in the article, 200 innings pitched with an ERA under 4:

Like Allen mentioned, the average pitcher that meets these requirements wins an average of 15 games. Randy Johnson won 24 in 2002, which was the same year that both Curt Schilling and Barry Zito won 23. At the "unlucky" end of the spectrum are Brandon Webb in 2004 and Matt Cain in 2007; they both had only 7 wins.

Monday, January 10, 2011

The Braves' bullpen was definitely one of the strongest in the league last year. Their collective ERA was second to the Padres and Giants, and they trailed only the Padres in FIP, xFIP, and wins above replacement. Veterans Billy Wagner and Takashi Saito were a huge part of this, as they both posted ERA/FIP/xFIPs under 3 over a combined 123 1/3 innings of work. Another dominant reliever out of the Braves' bullpen last year was rookie Jonny Venters, who made his major league debut against the Rockies during Ubaldo Jimenez's no-hitter on April 18th. The 25-year-old southpaw threw 83 relief innings last year and turned in 1.7 WAR, on par with elite closers Mariano Rivera, Neftali Feliz, and Rafael Soriano. It would appear that Bobby Cox gained confidence in Venters throughout the year as he let him pitch in more high-leverage situations as the season went on. The graph below illustrates this in the form of cumulative player leverage index (in which a "neutral" situation is 1).

The next question would be: what did Cox like so much about Venters? Before I look at his stuff with PITCHf/x, I will present a table that shows Venters' 2010 performance and, in the form of a percentile, how it related to other pitchers with a minimum of 1,000 pitches thrown.

Performance

Percentile

ERA*

1.95

97

FIP*

2.69

95

xFIP*

3.10

95

K/9*

10.08

95

BB/9*

4.23

14

GB Rate**

.678

100

Whiff Rate**

.359

100

Chase Rate**

.352

95

RV/100**

-1.50

95

xRV/100**

-1.10

93

*BIS data

**Gameday data

Other than suspect control, Venters has the qualities of an excellent relief pitcher, producing a ton of whiffs, swings out of the strikezone, strikeouts, and groundballs. Venters led the majors in groundball rate and was second in whiff rate to Carlos Marmol. Venters' repertoire is conducive to excelling in both of these categories, as last year he primarily used a mid-90s sinker and a mid-80s slider with great movement. Venters also throws a four-seam fastball; he showed a changeup last year, but ditched it in May. The charts below show the spin deflection from the catcher's perspective for each pitch and the velocity distribution for each pitch.

Venters' sinker drew rave reviews from teammate Billy Wagner, who said, "There's never been anybody in the game that's had a left-handed sinker like that. I mean nobody." The pitch had a pfx_z (vertical spin deflection) value a bit greater than 3 inches, which means that it dropped about a half a foot more than the typical fastball. And since it sits 94-95, there's not a whole lot of time for hitters to react to pitch's break.

Next up are some results for Venters' pitches, excluding the changeup that was only thrown 13 times. It's awesome if you know what all of these metrics mean, and if you don't, that's okay too - use this old post as your glossary.

#

%

Swing Rate

Whiff Rate

Zone Rate

Chase Rate

Watch Rate

RV/100

xRV/100

SI

778

.581

.478

.293

.355

.365

.315

-0.49

-0.67

FF

242

.181

.372

.233

.393

.211

.379

-1.88

0.43

SL

292

.218

.428

.656

.332

.431

.577

-4.05

-4.08

1332

.445

.359

.354

.352

.384

-1.50

-1.10

GB Rate

FB Rate

LD Rate

PU Rate

SI

.748

.112

.119

.021

FF

.447

.237

.237

.079

SL

.667

.190

.143

.000

.678

.146

.146

.029

A few things in particular caught my eye. Nothing is in the strikezone a whole lot, not even the four-seamer. Overall, the four-seamer looks like his weakest offering, and it still generates a whiff rate well above average for its pitch type. The sinker and the slider are absolutely filthy. Unsurprisingly, given the metrics I showed on Venters earlier, the sinker and slider are both spectacular at getting grounders and whiffs. The sinker was hit into play 143 times last year, and three-quarters of the time, it endangered a worm. When swung at, it was missed nearly 30% of the time, which is well over the league average for sinkers/two-seamers. In a much more limited sample of 38 balls in play, the slider induced a grounder two-thirds of the time, which is still spectacular. However, the thing that most caught my eye was the whiff rate on Venters' slider. Over the 125 swings that batters took against Venters' slider, they came up empty 82 times, which makes for an insane .656 whiff rate. Anything over 50% is elite, and I can only think of a few pitches that are in the category of Venters' slider. Ryan Madson's changeup was just about as nasty, garnering a .645 whiff rate over 138 swings; last year, Brandon League's splitter posted a mark of .683 over 183 swings. The high watch rate would mean that on the off-chance that the slider is in the strike zone, batters take it for a strike more often than not. The slider looks like an elite pitch in every way.

Before I move on, I'll give you a "bonus graph," if you will. It shows the plate locations, in feet and relative to the batter's strikezone, for Venters' sinker and four-seamer (the lines have been smoothed to better accentuate the trends). As you can see, the sinker usually crosses the plate at the bottom of the zone, while the four-seamer is more often than in the middle third.

The next thing I'd like to look at is Venters' pitch selection based on count leverage. He likes to throw the sinker a lot in any count; the only time he'll throw a lot of four-seamers are in 2-0 and 3-0 counts. With two strikes, you'll probably see either a sinker or a slider. The chart shows the pitch selection based on each count, and the tables break it down by batter handedness.

vs LHB

First

Ahead

Behind

Full

SI

.251

.447

.352

.450

FF

.272

.152

.455

.300

SL

.228

.385

.182

.250

vs RHB

First

Ahead

Behind

Full

SI

.283

.588

.724

.737

FF

.367

.111

.148

.132

SL

.154

.272

.089

.132

CH

.000

.023

.019

.000

Hopefully this has given you a pretty good idea of what Venters has to offer. He'll usually go after hitters with a viscous sinker in the mid-90s, and if he chooses to, he can also put them away with one of the best sliders in the majors. When hitters aren't missing against him, they're pounding the ball into the ground. His control isn't great, but he makes up for it by keeping balls out of play and limiting home runs. Overall, he looks like an elite reliever, and he will be given the chance to compete (along with Craig Kimbrel, whom I briefly profiled last week) for the Braves' closing job this spring.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

I've been all into this bunting stuff for the past month or so. I think it's fair to say that I've learned some things, though not as much as I may like. Briefly, I would like to examine some Yankee hitters with the bunting metrics I've been using. Data are from 2008-2010; use this as your glossary.

Attempt%

Bunt Attempts

Fair%

Hit%

Out%

Sac%

Bunt Runs

Bunt Runs / 100

Brett Gardner

.052

73

.507

.243

.378

.378

-1.73

1.16

Derek Jeter

.013

45

.489

.364

.091

.545

1.91

7.76

Curtis Granderson

.014

41

.463

.211

.368

.421

-1.29

0.37

Ramiro Pena

.056

31

.323

.400

.100

.500

0.25

4.32

Francisco Cervelli

.047

31

.613

.158

.211

.632

-0.60

1.61

Nick Swisher

.007

21

.619

.231

.231

.538

0.06

3.83

Watching Yankee games on television, I've always assumed that Gardner is a below average bunter, or at least that he's below average at getting the ball in play. Turns out that he's right at the league average on this front, and he also turns a higher amount of fair bunts into hits than does the average player. His speed helps with that. Jeter and Pena look like they're good at avoiding bunt outs, though Pena hits way too many foul bunts. Cervelli is great at getting the ball in play, and is rarely asked to do more than sacrifice. Swisher bunts extremely infrequently and has also shown the ability to get the ball in play. Granderson looks like an average bunter all around.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Last week, I used some different metrics to quantify bunting performance in 2010. In this post, I would like to build on what I found after researching the first part of this post. The clear issue with using data from only one year is that it becomes susceptible to small sample sizes, and since bunt attempts occur on such a small percentage of swings, that issue is magnified in this case. In order to get a better feel for bunting skill, I've set up the statistics I used last week for 2008 and 2009 data. Before I get into go on, I'd like to revisit the league averages that I showed at the beginning of last week's post.

Attempt%

Fair%

Foul%

Missed%

2008

.020

.501

.425

.074

2009

.020

.509

.421

.070

2010

.019

.505

.416

.080

.019

.502

.423

.075

Hit%

Out%

Sac%

Double Play%

2008

.189

.285

.515

.011

2009

.177

.288

.528

.007

2010

.188

.286

.517

.009

.184

.286

.520

.009

The league-wide samples stay pretty consistent year to year, which is good for establishing baselines for these metrics. However, the samples that I used in last week's post (20 bunt attempts or 10 fair bunts) did not correlate very well year-to-year. Notable R^2 are as follows: hit% - .514, out% - .226, sac% - .528, Bunt Runs/100 - .178. The one that surprised me the most, however, was coefficient of determination for fair bunt%. That was only .065, which I found strange considering fair bunt% appears to be a distinct skill. Bear in mind that even though we're looking at three years' worth of data, it's still a small sample size. In order to get players that were qualified bunters in back-to-back years, I had to eliminate all but 82 of the individual seasons. I was particularly puzzled by the low correlation for fair bunts, which I figured would be a detectable skill even in the limited sample.

Since we appear to have some of the SSS blues, I think the best way for us to cheer ourselves up is to open up the leaderboards to include 2008 and 2009 data. Well, maybe that's just me. Anyway, this section is going to contain a lot of tables - I'll have leaders and trailers for all of the metrics I discussed last week, along with some commentary when I feel it is necessary. Also, the minimums are now at 50 bunt attempts and 25 fair bunts. I'll begin with attempt percentage, for which I won't show any trailers (there 55 qualified players who haven't attempted a bunt in the three years). Oh, also, the swing minimum for attempt% is 1,000.

Rank

Name

Swing#

Attempt%

1

Willy Taveras

1625

.118

2

Carlos Gomez

2178

.114

3

Julio Borbon

1049

.104

4

Emilio Bonifacio

1666

.093

5

Erick Aybar

2420

.092

6

Nyjer Morgan

2181

.091

7

Juan Pierre

2386

.086

8

Gregor Blanco

1293

.081

9

Alexi Casilla

1290

.078

10

Luis Castillo

1652

.076

My love for the fair bunt% statistic is slightly diminished after seeing how poorly it correlated in my data, but I still think that it's an important statistic to look at. Below are the 10 leaders and trailers for fair bunt%; Chris Young (of the Diamondbacks) is really in a league of his own.

Rank

Name

Attempts

Fair Bunt%

1

Ramon Santiago

65

.769

2

Joey Gathright

78

.692

3

David Eckstein

78

.679

4

Clayton Kershaw

62

.677

5

Zach Duke

64

.672

6

Scott Podsednik

68

.662

7

Cole Hamels

53

.660

8

Franklin Gutierrez

51

.627

9

Ryan Dempster

80

.625

10

Elvis Andrus

103

.621

1x

Chris Young

51

.157

2x

Rajai Davis

78

.295

3x

Corey Hart

69

.333

4x

Omar Infante

55

.364

5x

Melky Cabrera

65

.369

6x

B.J. Upton

73

.370

7x

Emilio Bonifacio

155

.381

8x

Emmanuel Burriss

70

.386

9x

Brendan Ryan

75

.387

10x

Ted Lilly

66

.394

The next set of leaderboards are for hit%, out%, and sac% out of fair bunts.

Rank

Name

Fair Bunts

Hit%

1

Ichiro Suzuki

37

.568

2

Lastings Milledge

25

.480

3

Jacoby Ellsbury

38

.474

4

Gregor Blanco

60

.450

5

Angel Pagan

36

.444

6

Jose Reyes

40

.425

7

Rafael Furcal

48

.417

8

Alexi Casilla

60

.417

9

Michael Bourn

99

.404

10

Carlos Gomez

117

.385

Rank

Name

Fair Bunts

Out%

1

Josh Anderson

26

.615

2

Emilio Bonifacio

59

.525

3

Joey Gathright

54

.519

4

Juan Pierre

107

.505

5

Tony Gwynn

39

.487

6

Rafael Furcal

48

.479

7

Carlos Gomez

117

.479

8

Emmanuel Burriss

27

.444

9

Nyjer Morgan

100

.440

10

Willy Taveras

107

.439

Rank

Name

Fair Bunts

Sac%

1

Braden Looper

25

.960

2

Jamie Moyer

29

.931

3

Ricky Nolasco

28

.893

4

Roy Oswalt

34

.882

5

Hiroki Kuroda

30

.867

6

Barry Zito

35

.857

7

Ryan Dempster

50

.840

8

Clayton Kershaw

42

.833

9

Livan Hernandez

28

.821

10

Derek Lowe

37

.811

Unsurprisingly, all of the sacrifice leaders are pitchers. The first position players to appear on the list are Daric Barton (.760), Yuniesky Betancourt (.724), and Jamey Carroll (.720).

Like I did last week, I will end with a glance at the best overall bunters with linear weights - this includes a weighting of their hits, sacrifices, and outs, and also takes into account missed and foul bunts. Again, I will present in a counting form and in the form of bunting runs / 100 pitches. However, in order to (hopefully) make it more intuitive, the rate stat will be scaled to the league average bunt as opposed to the league average event. Over the past three seasons, the average bunt has been worth -3.53 runs per 100 pitches, so that will be what I consider "average," or 0. Onto the best and worst bunters of the past three years:

Rank

Name

Bunt Runs

1

Ichiro Suzuki

5.41

2

Alexi Casilla

4.67

3

Gregor Blanco

4.32

4

Jacoby Ellsbury

3.87

5

Angel Pagan

3.77

6

Michael Bourn

2.70

7

Rafael Furcal

2.16

8

Erick Aybar

1.98

9

Cliff Pennington

1.94

10

Gerald Laird

1.84

1x

Juan Pierre

-9.54

2x

Ryan Dempster

-6.57

3x

Ubaldo Jimenez

-6.42

4x

Bronson Arroyo

-6.08

5x

Zach Duke

-5.88

6x

Mike Pelfrey

-5.69

7x

Ted Lilly

-5.54

8x

Derek Lowe

-5.44

9x

Orlando Hudson

-5.35

10x

Chad Billingsley

-5.00

Rank

Name

Bunt Runs / 100

1

Ichiro Suzuki

9.97

2

Angel Pagan

8.99

3

Jacoby Ellsbury

8.31

4

Alexi Casilla

8.19

5

Gregor Blanco

7.65

6

Cliff Pennington

6.26

7

Rafael Furcal

6.07

8

Coco Crisp

5.78

9

Gerald Laird

5.67

10

Jose Reyes

5.37

1x

Mike Pelfrey

-7.00

2x

Jeff Suppan

-6.33

3x

Ubaldo Jimenez

-6.20

4x

Zach Duke

-5.66

5x

Derek Lowe

-5.54

6x

Ted Lilly

-4.87

7x

Jair Jurrjens

-4.86

8x

Cole Hamels

-4.70

9x

Ryan Dempster

-4.69

10x

Clayton Kershaw

-4.22

As usual, the trailers include a lot of pitchers, who don't tend to get a lot of bunt hits. The first position players that appear on the list are Chris Young (-2.54), Brendan Ryan (-2.42), Tony Gwynn (-2.29), Yuniesky Betancourt (-1.70), and Juan Pierre (-1.13). Pierre has appeared a lot in these two posts, typically as a trailer in some category. Based on the data for these three years, he doesn't have the ability to be a productive enough bunter to offset his great number of bunt attempts. In fact, of the ten players that topped the attempt% list I showed at the beginning of this post, Pierre was the only player to grade out as a below-average bunter. One other note - I'm skeptical of the bunt runs values for Pennington and Furcal since Pennington had a bunt double and Furcal had two. Bunt doubles are essentially flukes, and since doubles are worth a lot more than singles are, they skew the run value totals.

With that, I'll put an end to this venture into bunting. There are more questions that I'd like to investigate (team bunting statistics and the impact of leverage on bunting as two that come to mind), and most importantly, I think we just need more data. For the time being, I would like to recognize Ichiro Suzuki as the best bunter of the past three years.